🔗 Share this article

Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. One descending timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And cabinets stocked of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean medical center observe a screen displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters below the ground. It’s the safest method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which release grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon recently, a group of three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. Seven days following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Our forces must defend our nation,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, 261 health workers have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, intends to erect 20 facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some injured personnel had to wait hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of air assaults. “We had two critically ill casualties who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a bush. The patient and the two other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, padded up to the doorway to await the incoming patients. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”